A Load of Kakapoo

Gday mites. I am back from down under and recovering from winter weather. And its raining in Dalyan now . Whats going on, its only the beginning of October ? For those of you of an adventurous turn of mind House swapping, which is how I got to go to Oz and New Zealand, is a bit like time share, except that you are in control of things. I had a lovely house near Christchurch in New Zealand, to live in,. It was a sort of farm and a bit remote, the nearest neighbours were 10 minutes walk away. Actually I got that wrong. The nearest neighbours were at the end of the garden in a paddock. My first morning I looked out and saw a very large sheep. No great surprise, New Zealand has 4million people and 40 million sheep. But this was VERY large, and had a long neck. I walked out to have closer look, thinking about a nice lamb chop, when three more came galloping toward me. They were Llamas, not indigenous to New Zealand, and not a lot of use really unless you want to scale the Andes, but very curious beasts and i got to quite like them. They had seven, so I met more of them than I did New Zealand men, who are very scarce. Possibly endangered like the Kakapoo. There are only 96 of them left and they now all live on a little island at the bottom of New Zealand. They are fat, plump, very friendly birds but they cant fly. Thats why there are only 96 left.
The men on the other hand aren’t fat and cant fly , though they did invent bungy jumping . They are friendly, but seem to spend a lot of time with the sheep, so you don’t get to see them much. I didn’t see any mountains either for three days. New Zealand is full of them, If you watch Lord of the Rings, filmed there, it is covered in them. Except for the bit around Christchurch, which is mostly covered in cloud. It was rather like being in England, same language, driving on the same side of the road. But when the cloud lifted it was a marvellous sight. The Canterbury plain is surrounded by a white gleaming wall of snow. Once you get away from the plain, and on nice days, the views are stunning. Mountains , lakes , ravines, Fjords, forests that look like rain forest , alongside high snow covered peaks.
I went whale watching and skiing in the same week. The skiing was great, a lot of snow around this year, and it is weird to whizz down and find a small green parrot flying alongside you. They are called Keas. They are common in the mountains , and they have a passion for roof racks and wind screen wiper blades. The signs that say ‘Do not feed the Keas’ are a bit useless when the car parks are full of appetising rubber ware.
The whales sadly eluded me again. Surprisingly they kept telling me it was too rough to go out ( the boat people not the whales) . I thought the descendants of Captain Cook would have been made of stouter stuff. Sperm Whales live near a place called Kaikora so I went up in a helicopter to see them. But they must have heard I was coming and dived. All I saw was a (not rough at all) ocean and few seals.
They wouldn’t let me leave Oz to go to NZ until I bought a return ticket, and the New Zealand immigration lady explained that though she was sure I was very nice, they had over done the immigration thing. When I left a different immigration lady apologised for the lack of whales. That I guess marks a real difference between there and probably everywhere else. Like all other Kiwis Immigration and airport security actually laugh and make jokes. They are nice human beings!
Braving the suspicious immigration man at Istanbul I got back to Dalyan late and next morning it was great to flop in the sun and get my tan back . Amazing how it had disappeared in just five weeks. Hope the rain stops soon.